Hi! My name is Andy, and I am a sophomore at Irvington high school. And I did this project for Ms. Berbawy's robotic class. My project is a mini Tesla coil. And the original is made by Ludic Science, The Tesla coil is designed by Nikola Tesla in 1891. It's basically high frequency series resonant transformer that can transfer ordinary voltage to high-frequency voltage.

The principle of Tesla coil is to use the transformer to boost the ordinary voltage and then charge the primacy LC loop resonant capacitor until it reaches to the own discharge threshold, spark gap discharge and conduction then the primacy LC loop resonant capacitor will start series resonance. It will provide an excitation power that high enough to the secondary coil. Because the frequency is same to the secondary LC loop, the electrically-induced action will make the distributed capacitance start series resonance with the secondary coil. At this time the terminal voltage will reach the maximum discharge so we can see the spark.

Step 1: Material Required

103K LOT 10 Ceramic-Capacitor ($9.99)

20K Ohm Resistor($5.77)

2N2222A Transistor($2.16)

Bread board($4.75)

Board($8.33)

Copper Coil (you don't want make a coil by you self.)($12.77)

Laser cutter

Soldering iron

Wires($20.00)

Step 2: Put All Electronic Components Together.

First, plug the transistor in the breadboard. Then plug the Ceramic-Capacitor and connect it with the first and third leg of the transistor. After that plug the resistor and make it connect with the second then plug another leg in the hole near by. Then plug the secondary winding with the resistor and the winding with the third leg of the transistor. After that connect another wire connect with the second leg of transistor and another wire connect with the resistor to make the power line. Then make a switch to control the whole circuit.

Step 3: Make a Little Box to Protect Components

Even though the Tesla coil is already finished, but all those components is directly expose in air. So it could be really useful to make a box to protect it. I made my box by a Laser cutter and I get my PDF from makeabox. It is really easy and fast.

Step 4: Finsh

Connect the two power wires with 15V power supply and turn the switch on. If it have sparks when you put metal near by, you finish it. If you think the spark is too small that wants to make it bigger you maybe need a larger power supply. But in that case you need to make sure that you are not going to get yourself shock.Here is a video for how it will look like.

Step 5: Suggestion

At first, I was try to made the coil with my hands but after several disappointment try I find out It's really hard to do it with out a wire drawing machine. So here is a little advise: Try to buy one on internet. Or you will get mess. Not only with the project, but also you finger. Not to mention it possible never work since the wire can't have any gap with each other. If you are really confident of soldering, you can even try to move the base from bread board to a circuit board.